196 



The Review of Reviews. 



August 1, 1906. 



LONDONS MIGHTY HOST OP PETTIOOATED HUMANITY. 



Next morning she was up betimes, and going down 

 to St. Paul's Churchyard met the great host of 

 workgirls- who come up by the early trains — one 

 mighty inflow of petticoated humanity in solid flood 

 almost without a ripple which comes into the City 

 from all the suburbs. The chilling sense of per- 

 sonal insignificance grew more intense as she made 

 her way into All Hallows Church, where the work- 

 girls are allowed to congregate till their offices 

 open : — 



The girla drew out their sewing, stitched to sacred masic, 

 and, if they liked, joined in a short servic* that followed. 

 The strange congregation of wayfarers prayed and sang, 

 rose or sat tight, just as it pleased them; and, when it 

 was over, read books of general intereat whicli they found 

 in the pews. A hall adjoining the church offered much 

 the same accommodation to the men. 



Lonely and disconsolate, Prue wandered about 

 seeking work and finding none till midday, when she 

 met an old school friend of means who gave her 

 a lunch in a girls' club, and invited her to meet her 

 another day at lunch at the Ineffable, a West End 

 club for men and women, where Dr. Emil Reich 

 was to lecture on Plato. Prue gladly accepted, and 

 met there the facsimile of Mrs. Crawford, formerly 

 Paris correspondent of the Daily News : — 



There was her Paris correspondent over for a holiday- 

 over for a holiday— a woman of middle age, with a coquetry 

 of silver hair that suggested a Pompadour in masquerade. 

 Her dark eyebrows, equally natural, and sparkling eyes 

 beneath were quite in keeping. The figure alone, in its 

 rotundity, told of tlie ravages of time, and of good dinners. 

 As the lady editor was presumptively clever, this one was 

 unquestionably eo. Sne was a walking enc.vcloprodia of all 

 the queer stories of all the aristocracies of Europe. Some- 

 times these were pointed with a laugh that shook her 

 whole frame, and made her very shoulders look wicked, 

 not to speak of the massive head that rested on them 

 without any visible intervention' of a neck. Her repertory 

 was her living. She could sit down at a moment's notice 

 and reel off the most side-splitting things about the social 

 celebrities of the day. 



There also she met a sweet girl, Mary Lane, who 

 was on tour with a van through the country' with an 

 old-fashioned interlude play which was to redeem 

 the villagers from the dulness of themselves. Before 

 travelling with her van Mary Lane, a country clergy- 

 man's daughter, had maintained herself by telling 

 the children of the slums stories and teaching them 

 how to play. The mothers paid id. per week or 

 l^d. on taking a quantity, and nothing at all when 

 there was nothing to spare. When her health broke 

 down she organised a stock company of three girls 

 and herself, hired a van, and travelled through 

 England playing a storv poem 500 years old which 

 she had unearthed from the Earlv English Text 

 Society. She never charged for admission, but kept 

 the concern going by collections. The villagers 

 volunteered to act as supers, and they played in the 

 open air or in barns : — 



At Sherwood we gave the whole scene of the Nativity In 

 a glade of the forest, with the Magi of the village choir 

 nicking their way by the light of the moon In a cloudless 

 heaven, and of a bright, particular star that happened to 

 he on service for the night. Ob, the beauty of it — the 

 heauty! The words came like whispers of the purest poetry 

 Irom the very heart of things. 



Prue was engaged to replace one of the company, 

 and for a little time lived in fairyland, masquerad- 

 ing as a man in doublet and hose. The play was a 

 great success. Mr. Whiteing evidently must join 

 Mr. Benson's Dramatic Revival Society without loss 

 of time. He says : — 



The point is that this handful of girls, with the simplest 

 of "dresses and appointments," with only such music as 

 may be brought to every village in the land, have held 

 an audience of English rustics spell-bound by means of 

 mere nature working in a medium of perfect simplicitv of 

 great art. 



THE EDITOR OF "THE BRANDING lEON." 



Winter came, however. Mary Lane went into 

 winter quarters at the Tolstoy colony at Christ 

 Church. Prue went back to town. There, at her 

 charwoman's housewarming, she was fated to meet 

 Mr. George Leonard, of T/ie Branding Iron, a man 

 not a day older than five and twenty, with an air 

 of purpose and the beauty of the devil. He started 

 his paper without capital, in a back parlour, and a 

 deal table. He wrote the whole of it himself, and 

 gave away the whole of the first edition. He lost 

 £,<^ los. the first week, but gradually built up a 

 circulation. He adopted this method to prove that 

 ■' a thought can get itself uttered just as easily now 

 as ever it could in the age of the broadsheet and 

 the age of the pamphleteer." 



Prue is ob\-iously destined to fall in love with 

 him, and therefore at this stage there is introduced 

 another t\pe of the working girl — one Laura Belton, 

 an American gem engraver, her equally predestined 

 rival. The rivalry is, however, only developed later, 

 and before then Laura does Prue a good turn. The 

 struggle for work leads Prue to accept an engage- 

 ment as " a window pane." This is the technical 

 term describing young ladies who sit in shop win- 

 dows and manipulate some new invention before the 

 eyes of the passing crowd. Those who watch girls 

 so employed will do well to read the chapter de- 

 scribing Prue's experiences and learn to sympathise 

 with these chattels of public curiosity. The inven- 

 tion which Prue had to exhibit did not catch on, 

 and Prue was once more out of work. She declined 

 an in\-itation from Mary Lane at Christ Church, 

 where the sisters lived in semi-monastic retreat, pro- 

 testing by example as well as by precept " against 

 all luxury and extravagance and the anti-social mul- 

 tiplication of our daily wants," and renewed with 

 desperation the struggle for work. She tried every- 

 thing, answered all the catchpenny advertisements, 

 and finally fell to hunting for the treasure hidden 

 by the late Sir Alfred Harmsworth in order to in- 

 crease the circulation of the Weeklv Dispatch. !Mr. 

 Whiteing does not love the Tudor Street Napoleon, 

 and his description of the treasure-hunting craze is 

 a ven,- \\v\(\ piece of description and a not less 

 vigorous piece of invective. Prue was in actual 

 danger from the eager horde, but was rescued bv 

 George Leonard, who, without showing that he re- 

 cognised her, escorted her home. 



